Friday morning...

Heard this quote today on the way to work.
Found it quite intriguing:

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years.

Great nations rise and fall. The people go from bondage to spiritual truth, to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency, from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependence, from dependence back again to bondage.

This is apparently a combination of two quotes, the first (ending at the word dictatorship) is attributed by the Library of Congress to "Alexander Fraser Tytler, Lord Woodhouselee. Unverified."
The 2nd is listed as "Author unknown. Attributed to Benjamin Disraeli. Unverified."
Origins aside, I find this quote fairly interesting. As our political system is just over 200 years old... Things to think about.


The other thing I wanted to link to today is this video on youtube. Hilarious.
All of the primary candidates, the presidential hopefuls, wield the word change like a flaming sword handed over from an authority on high. I think change is the single most frequently used word in this entire campaign. Anyways, without further ado and for your viewing pleasure: